Hard Day's Knight

  CJ slapped her hand against her forehead, moaning softly to herself. “I try to tell her, but does she listen? Does she believe me? No, she just goes on like nothing I say matters. It’s like talking to a redheaded clump of dirt.”

  “I know, I know, you use your superpowers only for good. My cousin the martyr. Oooh, look, there’s Bliss ready to joust against one of Fenice’s boyfriends. My money is on her.”

  CJ mumbled more dire warnings, but I didn’t listen to them. There was no sense in worrying about something that was out of my control—although I had more or less decided that Walker was worthwhile investigating, a lot depended on him. There was only so much unrequited interest a girl could express without getting really depressed.

  We settled down to watch the afternoon’s qualifying rounds, Moth happily curling up inside a paper bag that someone had used to bring lunch items. The afternoon jousts were pretty much the same as the morning’s courses, only this time the jousters were in armor, with no shields.

  It wasn’t until the end that the first inklings of something sinister tickled my brain. Bos was up against one of Farrell’s men, a slight guy with a weedy moustache and ears bristling with very un-medieval earrings.

  “That’s . . . um . . . what’s his name . . . Allen. He’s the newest member of Team Joust!, according to Farrell.”

  CJ shot me a look that said much, all without words. Fenice and one of her Oregon jousters had joined us, sitting on the row below, offering commentary on all the jousters—all but Farrell’s team members. I felt obliged to fill in the gaps of their knowledge, whether or not they wanted them filled.

  “Allen told me his dad used to joust with Farrell, but he’s retired.”

  “Ah,” Fenice said.

  “Allen has been jousting since he was a kid.”

  “Has he?” Gary, Fenice’s friend, said in a very noncommittal voice.

  “Yup.” I waited for a count of three, then added, “His favorite color is blue, he wears a size-eleven shoe, and was a virgin until he was nineteen.”

  CJ glared at me for a second. I grinned back at her, then directed my attention to the arena as Bos and Allen lined up, both waiting for their respective squires to place the lances in their hands. Walker was squiring Bos, and I spent a few seconds watching him, asking myself what it was about him that interested me so much. I’d just come to the conclusion that it was equally the sense of loneliness and pain I glimpsed in his eyes, and the challenge his dominating, curmudgeonly attitude presented, when Bos gave a shout and the horses jumped forward. Both men waited until they were halfway down the list before leveling their lances.

  CJ and Fenice jumped up to cheer Bos on. I made sure Moth was sleeping in his paper bag before I stood up to add my voice to the cheering section. The two men came together directly in front of us, giving us a ringside view as their lance tips slammed into the target piece of metal bolted onto the shoulder plate of the armor. Just as Bos’s lance touched his opponent’s shoulder, Marley stumbled hard, almost going down to his knees. The entire length of Bos’s lance shattered as he was thrown forward and to the side, causing Allen’s lance to catch him not on the special piece of armor meant to take the blow of a lance, but instead tearing across the other side of his chest and down his right arm.

  “Oh, dear God,” I breathed as Allen frantically tried to pull his lance away from Bos, but the tip caught in one of the metal lames, the overlapping pieces of armor on his arm. Bos screamed as the force of the lance slammed even harder against him, literally ripping him right out of the saddle.

  I was down the stairs even before I realized I had moved, CJ right behind me.

  “Take care of the cat,” I yelled back to Fenice, who had her hands over her eyes, her fingers spread to peek through them.

  CJ ran down the length of the seating area to the opening onto the arena floor, but being half a foot taller than her, I didn’t bother. I grabbed a handful of my Irish dress and chemise, vaulted the railing, and dropped three feet to the soft dirt-and-sand floor of the arena. Several of the tournament ground crew were running to converge on the downed Bos, who was lying unmoving in the middle of the list. Walker was already at his side as a wild-eyed Marley cantered by me. His neck and flanks were wet, indicating that he was in distress. Quickly squelching the more graphic thoughts of what injuries a horse in pain could inflict on me, I lunged sideways and caught the end of a rein as he passed me.

  Marley fought for a few minutes, but finally allowed himself to be calmed. I brought him to a halt, speaking in a low voice, stroking his slick neck until his breathing slowed down. Remembering the stumble in the ring, I slid my hand gently down his near leg, feeling a slight swelling on his cannon bone.

  In the middle of the ring, Allen, having dismounted from his big roan mare, stood watching silently as Walker gave way to a pair of paramedics. Butcher collected up bits of the shattered lance, giving them a long, curious look. Walker had peeled part of Bos’s armor off to assess the damage, but the bright smear of red on the dull gray metal was enough to tell me that whatever the injuries were, they weren’t minor. The paramedics bundled Bos onto a stretcher and carried him off to the hushed murmurs of the shocked audience. Walker, still holding a bloody breastplate, consulted with CJ and Butcher for a minute; then he followed the paramedics out of the arena.

  “How badly is he hurt?” I asked when CJ walked slowly toward me. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know. He was unconscious. Walker thinks he might have broken some ribs, and it looks like his arm is torn up.”

  “Oh, how awful. I hope it’s nothing serious. Poor Bos. What bad luck.”

  “Luck?” The word was spoken on a sob. “Butcher and Walker say that something was wrong with the lance.”

  “Yeah, the whole thing kind of shattered. I thought only the tips were supposed to do that?”

  Her face was pale and had a strained quality, as though her flesh were being stretched too thin. “They are. Butcher thinks it was sabotaged. Oh, God, Pepper, who would do such a terrible thing to Bos?”

  I shivered despite the heat. The horror in her eyes was contagious, leaving me sick and cold. “No one would be that inhuman; it must have been a faulty lance. Poor, poor Bos. He’ll be horribly disappointed he won’t be able to joust.”

  CJ looked at me in disbelieving silence for a moment, her eyes full of tears, her face ravaged. “You don’t understand, do you? It’s not just Bos who won’t be able to joust—the whole team is out of the competition now. It’s all over. Everything is ruined. Everything!” She burst into tears, turning to run from the ring. Butcher met her at the entrance, swinging her up in his arms, holding her close as she sobbed against his chest. I glanced over to where Fenice was sitting. She had one hand across her mouth, her face stark with disbelief. Gary, the American jouster, had his arm around her, trying to console her, but even from where I stood I could see the despair in her eyes.

  “Come on, Marley. Let’s get you rubbed down and I’ll take a look at your leg.”

  Moth streaked down the stairs as I led Marley slowly by him, jumping up on the railing and watching me with his silly devil horns tipped to the side, his leash trailing down behind him. I led Marley over to him, holding up my arm to scoop the cat off the railing, but before I could, Moth decided to take matters into his own paws. He gathered himself, then sprang down and landed on my shoulder for a moment before jumping over to the deep wood-and-leather saddle on Marley’s back.

  “You’re going on a diet, cat,” I said, rubbing the shoulder he had landed on. Marley looked back at Moth, snorted twice, then evidently decided he didn’t mind the cat as long as he remained on the saddle.

  “You animals are too strange for me,” I said softly as I led the duo past a sobbing CJ. Butcher had his face buried in her hair, but he lifted his head to nod at me as I walked Marley out of the still-hushed arena.

  The despair I’d seen in Fenice’s eyes was evident in the grim line of Butcher’s mouth. I wante
d to say something to comfort them, but there was just nothing to say.

  I walked Marley back to his stable in silence.

  Chapter Seven

  “What are you doing?”

  Marley turned his head and nuzzled my fingers as I gently probed the area around the slight swelling. I tensed for a second, relaxing as he did nothing more than snuffle my hand.

  “Marley’s been hurt.” I shifted sideways from where I was squatting in front of the big horse’s front legs. “See? Right here.”

  Fenice bent over to look at the spot on the left leg. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Use your fingers; you’ll feel it.”

  Marley blew into my hair. I prayed he was just smelling me, and not using my head as a convenient handkerchief.

  “Oh, yes, now I feel it. What is it?”

  “Feels like the start of a hematoma on his flexor muscle.” I gently pushed Marley’s muzzle away and stood up, wiping my hands on my skirt. “Who’s the vet around here? You should have him look at Marley’s leg before he runs a course again.”

  Fenice looked up from where she was still squatting, her face white with tension. “The vet? Is the injury serious, then?”

  “No, not really. It’s just a small swelling, but it needs to be opened and cleaned up before it gets worse. I could almost swear. . . .” I bit my lip, trying to figure out how Marley could hurt himself in that particular spot.

  “What could you swear?”

  I ran my hand down his leg again, weighing my words. “Look, do you see? Here—it looks almost like he’s had a cut there.”

  She bent over to look at what seemed like far too straight a laceration to be natural. “It does look like he’s cut himself.”

  I shook my head. “No, that would be more jagged; this looks like a straight slice, almost like . . .” I hated to say it. In the face of Bos’s terrible accident, the last thing I needed to do was to start paranoia running through the Three Dog Knights.

  “What?”

  On the other hand, if it was what I suspected, then the horses had to be protected. I made my mind up quickly. “It looks like someone took a scalpel and deliberately nicked him in a spot where a hematoma was almost certain to occur.”

  Fenice gasped, her eyes huge in the shadows of the stall. “My God!”

  “I could be wrong, but it’s something to point out to the vet.”

  She stood up slowly, her eyes on Marley, but I had a feeling she wasn’t really looking at him. “If we call the vet over and he sees an injury, he’ll disqualify Marley.”

  “Oh, surely not over such a small injury. It’s not very deep—it just needs to be drained and cleaned. If it’s done today, I doubt if Marley will even notice it tomorrow. Barring infection, he should be fine to ride then.”

  “You sound terribly sure of that.”

  I did a half nod, half shrug. “I was going to follow in my mother’s footsteps and be a vet, but I quit veterinary college after a few years. I did, however, do enough interning to know that this isn’t a serious injury . . . if it’s taken care of now.”

  Her eyes met mine. The anguish in them wrung my heart. “They’ll DQ Marley. They have a rule—no horses suffering any sort of injury can joust.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a bit of an overreaction in this instance, but that fits with what CJ was saying about the horses’ safety coming first.”

  Her fingers bit into my arm as I started to move around Marley, intending to put away the equipment I’d used to brush him down. “If they take Marley, we’ll be a horse short.”

  “Don’t they have to replace him?”

  She looked over my shoulder, her eyes huge and dark with pain. “Butcher, Marley’s injured.”

  The big Englishman swore colorfully as he and CJ approached, her eyes still red. Butcher frowned at Fenice. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Fenice pointed at me. “She’s a vet. She says it’s a hematoma and it needs to be drained.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” I said, holding up my hands to deny Fenice’s statement. “I’m not a vet—I said I thought about being one, but quit.”

  “Yes, but you went to vet college for three years before you quit,” CJ said quickly. “And you worked for your mother all those summers, so you have loads of experience.”

  “What is the big deal with my having experience?” I asked as Butcher ran his hand down Marley’s leg. His eyes were thoughtful as he glanced over to me. “I’m sure the Faire vet is very competent to deal with something so simple as a minor little hematoma. All it needs is to be drained, cleaned, and stitched back up. That and a shot of antibiotic, and Marley will be as good as ever.”

  “They’ll remove him from competition if the vet finds out he’s had an injury, no matter how slight,” Butcher said slowly.

  “Yeah, so Fenice says, but even if they did—and really, the injury isn’t that bad; he won’t notice it after tomorrow—surely the Faire people will give you another horse to use.”

  CJ clutched Butcher’s arm. He put one gigantic hand over her tiny one, his brown eyes worried. “All of the trained horses have been claimed. There are none left that aren’t being used by one of the jousting teams. If they take Marley away, it’ll mean someone in our team doesn’t joust.”

  “And if someone doesn’t joust, it means the competition is over for us all,” Fenice said, watching me carefully.

  “That’s what CJ said about Bos being injured. I’m really sorry about that. It’s a damned shame that you guys don’t have an alternate who can joust in Bos’s place, but since that’s so, what does it matter if Marley is yanked from competition or not?”

  Fenice and CJ were shaking their heads even before I stopped speaking. “We do have an alternate,” Fenice said.

  All three of them looked at me as if I were the answer to their prayers. My eyes widened as I realized what they were implying. “Like hell you do! I am not a jouster!”

  CJ rolled her eyes. “No, stupid, we don’t mean you—Walker is the alternate. Each team has to have one alternate named, and he’s the alternate for the Three Dog Knights.”

  Well, that was a load off my mind! “Thank God for Walker, say I! Well, so all’s well that ends well—aside from Bos being hurt, of course. Walker will joust in his place.”

  Butcher slid a glance toward Fenice, who was still watching me with an avidity that made me nervous. “It’s not going to be quite as easy as that, but that point aside, Walker won’t be able to joust if Marley is DQ’d.”

  I looked at the huge black horse now blowing sadly into an empty grain bucket. “He’s not hurt that badly. Maybe if you tell the vet that there are no other horses—”

  “There are other horses, but they aren’t trained, and there’s not enough time to train one,” Butcher interrupted. “Walker’s horse has to be ready to joust tomorrow in order to qualify for the remaining two jousts.”

  Three sets of eyes pleaded with me. I shook my head, knowing what they wanted without their even having to say it aloud. “Nope. Huh-uh. Not going to happen. What you’re asking is illegal. It’s against the law to practice veterinary medicine without a license.”

  “No, it isn’t,” CJ said quickly. “Lots of farmers do minor vet work themselves. Your mom said that the time you guys came up for the Calgary Stampede and she went out to help Grandpa with his sheep.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a difference between docking sheep’s tails and doing surgery,” I protested, starting to feel very trapped.

  “Please, we need you to help us,” Fenice said, clasping her hands together.

  “You said it was a minor injury.” Butcher’s broad face was both tired and strained. “If it’s such a little thing, and if Marley won’t be injured further by running a course tomorrow—which is also what you said—then you could do it for us and no one would be the wiser.”

  “I’d be the wiser,” I said, a wee bit desperately. “What if something went wrong? What if I made it worse?”

  “You’ve
done this before?” Fenice asked.

  I struggled with the urge to claim an easy out, but I knew CJ would know if I lied. “As a matter of a fact, I have, but—”

  “Then you won’t mess it up,” CJ said triumphantly.

  “And if the worst happened, we’d call the Faire vet,” Butcher added. “No blame would be attached to you.”

  “You’re not this horse’s owner,” I pointed out, grasping at the last straw I could find. “Even if I wanted to help you, I couldn’t without the owner’s permission.”

  Fenice and Butcher exchanged quick glances. “If we get it, will you do it?” she asked.

  “Well—”

  “I’ll go find the papers that have the horses’ information,” Fenice told Butcher, running off before I could object.

  He nodded. “And I’ll fetch Walker’s medical kit. He has a little veterinary experience as well, but not nearly as much as you. Love, you go find Bliss and Vandal, and have them get Walker’s name on the list as Bos’s replacement. What do you need to do the job, Pepper?”

  I raised my hands, then let them fall, too swept up in the current to fight my way out of it. “Whatever instruments Walker has, antibiotics, local anesthesia, antitetanus serum, suturing material, and someone to call the nuthouse, because this is an absolutely insane plan.”

  I refused to do so much as look at Marley’s leg again without the owner’s permission. Since Fenice couldn’t get ahold of him until late afternoon, it wasn’t until early evening that I was hunkered down in Marley’s stall, adjusting one of the big camp lights Bliss had brought for the surgery. Geoff and Walker were still at the hospital, although Walker had sent back word that Bos wasn’t seriously injured, but wouldn’t be jousting for a couple of months.

  “Would you angle the light a little more toward—Thanks, Bliss. Butcher, can you turn that one a little more to the left?”

  “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” CJ asked, her face pale and drawn in the shadows of the stable.

  “Nope, that’s what the local is for.” I looked down at the plastic box of Walker’s tools, impressed not only with the scope of what it held, but also by the quality of the instruments. I pulled a new syringe from its package, holding the bottle of Procaine, a common local anesthetic, up to the light while I inserted the needle, setting it aside on a bit of sterile gauze. “Vandal, could you hold his head? Thanks. All right, Marley, just stand still for a few minutes and we’ll get this taken care of.”